Low and Unfeeling and Brutal
"Low and Unfeeling and Brutal" was the 32nd Special Comment delivered on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, airing on 23 May 2008. The Comment Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on Senator Clinton's assassination remark to the editorial board of the Argus Leader Newspaper of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Once again, it was this: asked if her continuing fight for the nomination against Senator Obama hurts the Democratic party, she replied, quote, "I don't, because, again, I have been around long enough. You know, my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I just don't understand it. You know, there's lots of speculation about why it is." The comments were recorded and we showed them to you earlier and they are online as we speak. She actually said those words. Those words, Senator? You actually invoked the nightmare of political assassination? You actually invoked the specter of an inspirational leader, at the seeming moment of triumph for himself and a battered nation yearning to breathe free, silenced forever? You actually used the word "assassination" in the middle of a campaign with a loud undertone of racial hatred - and gender hatred - and political hatred? You actually used the word "assassination" in a time when there is a fear, unspoken but vivid and terrible, that our again-troubled land and fractured political landscape might target a black man running for president? Or a white man. Or a white woman! You actually used those words, in this America, Senator, while running against an African-American man against whom the death threats started the moment he declared his campaign? You actually used those words, in this America, Senator, while running to break your "greatest glass ceiling" and claiming there are people who would do anything to stop you? You! Senator - never mind the implications of using the word "assassination" in any connection to Senator Obama - What about you? You cannot say this! The references, said her spokesperson, were not, in any way, weighted. The allusions, said Mo Elleithee are, " - historical examples of the nominating process going well into the summer and any reading into it beyond that would be inaccurate and outrageous." I'm sorry. There is no inaccuracy. Not for a moment does any rational person believe Senator Clinton is actually hoping for the worst of all political calamities. Yet the outrage belongs not to Senator Clinton nor her supporters, but to every other American. Firstly, she has previously bordered on the remarks she made today, then swerved back from them and the awful skid they represented. She said, in an off-camera interview with "Time" on March 6, "Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June, also in California. Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual. We will see how it unfolds as we go forward over the next three to four months." In retrospect, we failed her when we did not call her out, for that remark, dry and only disturbing, inside the pages of a magazine. But somebody obviously warned her of the danger of that kind rhetoric. After the Indiana primary, on May 7th, she told supporters at a Washington hotel: "Sometimes you gotta calm people down a little bit. But if you look at successful presidential campaigns, my husband did not get the nomination until June of 1992. I remember tragically when Senator Kennedy won California near the end of that process." And at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, on the same day, she again avoided the word assassination: "You know, I remember very well what happened in the California primary in 1968 as, you know, Senator Kennedy won that primary." On March 6th, she had said "assassinated." By May 7th, she had avoided it. Today, she went back to an awful well. There is no good time to recall the awful events of June 5th, 1968 in Los Angeles, of Senator Bobby Kennedy, happy and alive, perhaps for the first time since his own brother's death in Dallas in 1963, galvanized to try to lead this nation back from one of its darkest eras, only to fall victim to the same scourge that took that brother and Martin Luther King. There is no good time to recall this. But certainly to invoke it two weeks before the exact 40th anniversary of the assassination is an insensitive and heartless thing. And certainly to invoke it three days after the awful diagnosis, and heart-breaking prognosis, for Senator Ted Kennedy is just as insensitive, and just as heartless. And both actions open a door wide into the soul of somebody who seeks the highest office in this country, and through that door shows something not merely troubling, but frightening, and politically inexplicable. What, Senator, do you suppose would happen if you withdrew from the campaign, and Senator Obama formally became the presumptive nominee, and then suddenly left the scene? It doesn't even have to be the "dark curse upon the land" you implied today, Senator, nor even an issue of health. He could simply change his mind, or there could unfold that perfect-storm scandal your people have often referenced, even predicted. Maybe he could get a better offer from some other, wiser, country. What happens then, Senator? You are not allowed back into the race? Your delegates and your support vanish? The Democrats don't run anybody for President? What happens, of course, is what happened when the Democrats' vice presidential candidate in 1972, Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, had to withdraw from the ticket after it had been proved he had not been forthcoming about previous mental health treatments. George McGovern simply got another vice president. Senator, as late as the late summer of 1864, the Republicans were talking about having a second convention to withdraw Abraham Lincoln's re-nomination and choose somebody else, because until Sherman took Atlanta in September it looked like Lincoln was going to lose the election to George McClellan. You could hypothetically suspend your campaign, Senator. There's plenty of time and plenty of historical precedent, Senator, in case you want to come back in, if something bad should happen to Senator Obama. Nothing serious, mind you. It's just like you said, "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California." Since those awful words in Sioux Falls, and after the condescending, buck-passing statement from her spokesperson, Senator Clinton has made something akin to an apology, but without any evident recognition of the true trauma she has inflicted. "I was discussing the Democratic primary history, and in the course of that discussion mentioned the campaigns both my husband and Senator Kennedy waged California in June in 1992 and 1968," she said in Brandon, South Dakota. "I was referencing those to make the point that we have had nomination primary contests that go into June. That's a historic fact. "The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy. I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, particularly for the Kennedy family, was in any way offensive, I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever." "My view is that we have to look to the past and to our leaders who have inspired us and give us a lot to live up to and I'm honored to hold Senator Kennedy's seat in the United States Senate in the state of New York and have the highest regard for the entire Kennedy family. Thanks." Not a word about the inappropriateness of referencing assassination. Not a word about the inappropriateness of implying - whether it was intended or not - that she was hanging around waiting for somebody to try something terrible. Not a word about Senator Obama. Not a word about Senator McCain. Not I'm sorry. Not I apologize. Not I blew it. Not please forgive me. God knows, Senator, in this campaign, the nation has had to forgive you, early and often. And despite your now traditional position of the offended victim, this nation has forgiven you. We have forgiven you your insistence that there have been widespread calls for you to end your campaign, when such calls, in fact, had been few. We have forgiven you your misspeaking about Martin Luther King's relative importance to the Civil Rights movement. We have forgiven you your misspeaking about your under-fire landing in Bosnia. We have forgiven you insisting Michigan's vote wouldn't count and then claiming those who would not count it were Un-Democratic. We have forgiven you pledging to not campaign in Florida and thus disenfranchise voters there, and then claim those who stuck to those rules were as wrong as those who defended slavery or denied women the vote. We have forgiven you the photos of Osama Bin Laden in an anti-Obama ad. We have forgiven you fawning over the fairness of Fox News while they were still calling you a murderer. We have forgiven you accepting Richard Mellon Scaife's endorsement and then laughing as you described his "deathbed conversion." We have forgiven you quoting the electoral predictions of Boss Karl Rove. We have forgiven you the 3 a.m. phone call commercial. We have forgiven you President Clinton's disparaging comparison of the Obama candidacy to Jesse Jackson's. We have forgiven you Geraldine Ferraro's national radio interview suggesting Obama would not still be in the race had he been a white man. We have forgiven you the dozen changing metrics and the endless self-contradictions of your insistence that your nomination is mathematically probable rather than a statistical impossibility. We have forgiven you your declaration that some primary states count and some really don't. We have forgiven you exploiting Jeremiah Wright in front of the editorial board of the lunatic-fringe "Pittsburgh Tribune-Review." We have forgiven you exploiting William Ayers in front of the debate on ABC. We have forgiven you for boasting of your "support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans." We have even forgiven you repeatedly praising Senator McCain at Senator Obama's expense, and at your own expense, and at the Democratic ticket's expense. But Senator, we cannot forgive you this. "You know, my husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California." We cannot forgive you this, Senator, not because it is crass and low and unfeeling and brutal. This is unforgivable, because this nation's deepest shame, its most enduring horror, its most terrifying legacy, is political assassination. Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy. And but for the grace of the universe or the luck of the draw: Reagan, Ford, Truman, Nixon, Andrew Jackson, both Roosevelts, even George Wallace. The politics of this nation is steeped enough in blood, Senator Clinton. You cannot and must not invoke that imagery anywhere at any time! And to not appreciate, immediately - to still not appreciate tonight just what you have done today is to reveal an incomprehension of the America you seek to lead. This, Senator, is too much because a senator, a politician, a person who can let hang in mid-air the prospect that she might just be sticking around, in part, just in case the other guy gets shot has no business being, and no capacity to be, the President of the United States. See Also Category:2008 Special Comments